When I see the word SPLAT, I think of those Nickelodeon slime machines. The ones primed and ready to be sprung on any unsuspecting celebrity at the annual Kids’ Choice Awards? The kind boldly trying to make a technologically-boosted comeback with the…NFL? Yes, that did happen.

But the beauty of the dictionary is how you can start with one word you think you know and stumble upon a definition you’d never heard of. Case in point: a splat is also “a broad, flat piece of wood, either pierced or solid, forming the center upright part of a chair back…” The more you know, I guess.

I added the hourglasses within them because it’s a reminder as much to me as to anyone: time in the chair is where the good things happen. The brainstorming and the idle daydreaming is crucial, yes. But ideas aren’t much of anything without a little bit of execution, and that’s where the splat, the space where you press your back into when you’re especially feeling your way through a piece, really does its job.

Sometimes it feels like there’s very little magic in the world. I think a lot about that line in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End when Barbossa says, “The world used to be a bigger place,” and Jack Sparrow responds with, “The world’s still the same. There’s just…less in it.” This goes hand in hand with Hellboy II when Prince Nuada says, “We die…and the world will be poorer for it.” They’re both getting at the same thing: gone are the pirates and the fairies and the elves, and in its place is a lack of imagination and creativity. There’s less problem-solving because there’s an app for everything. There’s less reading because our brains are too shorted to stay focused. There’s less art given the space to create any sense of wonder because it’s all fed through the meat grinder of ‘content’. The world hasn’t changed size. But sometimes it certainly feels like there’s less in it.

Which brings me to the Summer of 2019. My wife and I tip-toe down creaky wooden stairs into a New Zealand glow-worm cave. As we become immersed in the darkness, a light glows to our right, close to the ground. There lays a giant bone, like a femur from a large animal. We’ve just been told how animals would sometimes unknowingly sink through the grass above us and fall into the caves, their lonely bodies wasting to bones. The most common victim of this disappearing spell: cows. But this bone? This is not a cow, they explain. This giant bone comes from a Moa, one of nine kinds of flightless New Zealand birds. The largest of these birds grew to be 12 feet tall and 540 pounds. In other words: absolutely terrifying.

It’s very possible they were just joking with us ignorant tourists. Moas have been extinct for over 6 centuries, after all. But I chose to believe. It was far more interesting to do so. It made the world feel a little bigger, like it still retained just a little bit more magic.

Something pretty damn magical happened in 1973, when Action Comics’ Issue #425 had Superman fighting a Flying Moa. You did not misread that. A. Flying. Moa. The story, as it turns out, is about a hunter who unknowingly kills the last Moa on earth. Regretting his actions, he makes a commitment to finding a Moa egg. Upon finding one, he doesn’t seem to realize that the egg – engulfed in flames – may be superpowered and brings it back to Metropolis to help create more Moas. The hunter is being interviewed by none other than Clark Kent when the egg hatches and out comes a flying, screeching Moa. It’s wild. The sweet thing about this is that the Moa has no intentions of killing or hurting anyone – it just wanted to go home. So Superman does the Superman thing and brings him all the way back to New Zealand where he sets up a Moa reserve. The fact we haven’t heard about this in the years since the issue tells me it probably didn’t last very long. But at least the dude tried!

I find little bits of bizarre comics trivia like this rather inspiring. It’s a window into a time when, yes, they were probably really grasping for narrative straws in the face of having to produce so many issues in such a short period of time. But the focus on quantity over quality meant some really crazy, even magical ideas could squeak through. A little bit of magic could sneak in through the door and make the world, once again, feel a little bigger.

All you need is a drip. Just a couple drops. And then a whole lot of patience. Before you know it, something unexpected blossoms. From there, the building begins.

I drew this more for myself than anything, a reminder of just how powerful those idle, phone-less moments have been for me these past couple of years. Yes, fatherhood has shrunk the amount of time I have to create. But I’m actually writing more because I’m doing two things: 1) making better use of the time I do have, and 2) savoring those moments of walking or playing with my daughter, where my brain can sit and be patient and slowly wait for something to leak out.

A key example: once we were trying to watch a movie (The French Dispatch) only to be interrupted so often in the first ten minutes by our daughter’s nighttime crying that we wondered if the sound of the TV – which never seemed to carry that far – had somehow awoken her. It turned out she needed a diaper change. But then as I rocked her back to sleep, staring into the dark, a few leaks sprung out the back of my brain and out grew an entire 1st half of a movie I’ve been trying to dream up. The shots. The storylines that weave together. It all came to me so carefully-constructed. I knew the challenge would remain to put it to paper, a translation that is never quite as precise as we’d like it to be. But it’s there. And it all came from a little drip-drip as I rocked in the dark, my daughter rowing towards the shores of Dreamland.

It is probably no coincidence some of the best dripping occurs in the shower. Just recently, I had been trying to work out how to restructure a seven-thousand word first draft of an essay, an accomplishable task which still stressed a brain desperate to relax. Shortly after the glass began to steam up, the drips kicked in. Little by little, vertabrae unspooled, begging me to pull it in alignment. I luxuriated in the feeling of having something. It made the shower that much sweeter. And then I rushed to type it out before it escaped me.

(Sister: I still have the Aqua Notes waterpoof writing pad you so cleverly gifted me; I just to find it first! )

There is much for me to learn from our 16-year-old cat. The way he lounges pretty much all day, saving up his energy for late-night zoomies. The way he can sprint from any situation at a moment’s notice. How he can snuggle in ways blankets never could approach. Whenever we use the bathroom, our 16-year-old cat crowds the sink, awaiting a drip from the faucet. But there’s a particular flow he craves. Drops aren’t enough to get him interested. A rush of water is too fierce. What he requires – and insists upon – is a steady flow, like a perpetual blowing upon a dandelion. Soft enough to be a whisper; steady enough to be a breeze. He knows what will satiate. He knows what will carry him on.

Drips come in many forms. Showers, mindless car trips, sitting in a doctor’s office with my phone in my pocket. The mind needs to the chance to breathe, to drip, to find its way into a steady, satiating leak.

There is no more iconic gateway in my lifetime than Jurassic Park. Burnt into the front of my brain as a child, it’s remained there ever since. It evokes all kinds of feelings: fear, wonder, awe. It’s nostalgic. It’s otherworldly. It’s a reminder in these COVID times that people will, indeed, ignore the greater scientific warnings for their own selfish pursuits.

I’ve been inspired to play with ASL more in my art (something that’s already been done with incredible skill and artistry over the years) just as I’ve been inspired to play with ASL geography in my writing. I have no idea where it will lead. But, for now: welcome.

Whenever I show people the sign for “open”, I always remind them of doors. It seems like the easiest visual, the way our hands are almost perfectly shaped like arched entryways. But the sign can be applied to any number of hinged things.

What I find interesting these days about the sign for open is the placement. If I sign it right in front of the listener, you can open one or both hinges inwards or outwards. Either way, you’re opening yourself up to someone. You’re, as the gate above says, welcoming them.

The life of a disabled person means you’re careful who you’re opening yourself up to. You’ve been there when your story has been used – perhaps many times – for inspiration porn. You’ve seen it misused and misappropriated. You’ve seen the way they keep asking you to dig deeper and deeper, as if your central-most truth is all that different from anyone else’s.

Wings are always a puzzle to draw. There are so many variations of them, from the avian to the reptilian to the angelic. They can be imposing or inviting, nightmarish or holy. They can elevate or behead. They are a bodily form we are still, after all these years, trying to successfully, safely imitate in a more personal way. What marvel is there in flight when 150 people can frequently engage in it all at once?

Inevitably, I split the difference between drawing from memory and reference. I’ll find a picture, give it a shot, and then fill in the blanks on my own. It’s never perfect, but it’s a wing that did not exist before. It’s another footprint to add to the drawing journey.

I don’t remember exactly why I grew the roots at the base of this person, who perhaps quite intentionally looks somewhat like me. But I imagine it had something to do with the warm and #fuzzy feelings of growth that come with getting back to your roots. With simplifying your life. With starting with a pencil, some paper, and a dream. In other words: it’s very much like my writing process. The pieces that I’ve felt the proudest about have come from simply getting back to the basics of what interested, astonished, bewildered, confused, grabbed hold of me. When you start with something you can’t quite let go of, you don’t have to find your way back to it; it will pull you in all on its own. It will make you think, if only briefly, that you can fly. A warm, fuzzy feeling will envelope you. The future will feel brighter and alive with possibility. The gravity will feel less oppressive. You will think you’re flying when, really, you’re floating. Floating on the buzz of creativity sparked.

But all of this comes with putting down that first puzzle piece. That first feather. That first attempt at dreaming a little bigger.